O God, whose blessings we have received in abundance, under whose watchful eye we live and move, and by whose providence and grace we have so much for which to live and labor, we acknowledge your goodness to us.
We offer thanks for food which sustains our bodies, for fellowship which deepens our appreciation for friendship, and for the various opportunities afforded us as Rotarians.
Grant us grace to fulfill the call to service to which we have responded. Amen.
Rotary Club of North Jackson – Quarterly Membership Changes
Membership (not including Honorary) March 31, 2019 100
Termination ( T) / Addition ( A)
Name
Effective Date
Reason
Membership after Change
T
Joe Harris
04-20-19
Deceased
99
T
Lucian Harvey, Jr.
05-30-19
Health
98
T
Claude Harbarger
06-11-19
Retired/ Family Obligation
97
T
Bill Randolph
06-25-19
Non-payment of dues & Attendance
96
T
Justin Croft
06-29-19
Non-payment of dues / Resigned
95
Birthdays And Anniversaries.
Birthdays:
Billy Walton July 31
Charles Lindsay August 01
Wyatt Emmerich August 02
Ed Sentell August 04
Eric Bragg August 05
Tom Turner August 05
Wedding Anniversaries:
Jack & Hailey Allin August 04
Membership Anniversaries:
Mike Farrell 13 years, August 01
June 16 Program
Steve Hutton , Executive Director, Mississippi Fair Commission, presented an excellent program on the operation and activities of his agency , the Mississippi State Fairgrounds, Coliseum, and Mississippi Trade Mart.
Currently under construction, the new Mississippi Trade Mart at the State Fair Grounds in Jackson is designed to attach to the existing Mississippi Coliseum, expanding the functionality and flexibility of both facilities. The Trade Mart's design allows the three trade halls to be configured to provide a seamless connection to the Coliseum’s arena floor, allowing for larger trade shows and events than currently possible.
Architect's rendering of New Mississippi Trade Mart
Eric Sokolsky was inducted into membership in the Rotary Club of North Jackson at the Club’s July 23, 2019, meeting.
Eric is Vice President- Sales for Employee Administrative Services Inc. (EASI) which provides payroll, time, and attendance services. He has been with his company for 4 years.
Eric is married. He and his wife Lisa have lived in the metro area for the past 39 years, currently residing in Madison. They are parents of one daughter and have 3 grandchildren.
We welcome Eric into our Cub. He (center) is shown in the following photo with his proposer Lori Greer(left) and his sponsor Past President Don Roberts.
John A. Meynardie, Assistant U. S. Attorney, Criminal Division, Southern District of Mississippi, spoke to the Rotary Club of North Jackson at the Club's July 23, 2019, meeting. The subject of his talk was the Opioid Epidemic in Mississippi. He said that in 2018, the U.S. Center for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) estimated that in the U.S. there is one opioid death every 8 minutes and that opioid overdoses are the leading cause of death from injuries in the US. The primary causes of those deaths are heroin and prescription opioids plus fentanyl. He said that the term opioid arises from the fact that opium poppies are the original source of opioid pain killers that act on the opiate receptors in the human brain. The primary drugs being abused today are heroin, oxycodone, and hydrocodone. Fentanyl is an impurity in the drugs.
According to Mr. Meynardie, the common misconception in the public is that prescribed opioids are "safe" because they are from a doctor. HIstorically physicians prescribed 30-day supplies of the drugs following surgery or injuries as pain killers. Recent studies have shown that a person who takes the prescribed pain-killers for 30-days has a 1 in 4 chance of becoming addicted and that if a person is taking these medicines without a doctor's supervision the addiction chances increase immensely. The properties of these drugs are such that the longer you take them and the more you take, the more your chances of becoming addicted increase. As the costs of drugs increases, addicts seek cheaper alternatives; i.e., heroin. Mr. Meynardie cited that 75-80% of heroin users began with pain pills. For high school seniors, the most abused medicines are pain pills such as oxycodone and hydrocodone. the sources of those pills are relatives or friends. He cited an example of a football quarterback who was injured and prescribed pain pills. He followed a familiar track until 4 years later he died of a heroin overdose.
Data show that Mississippi has more painkiller prescriptions than most other states with in excess of 100 painkiller prescription per 100 people, but that the number of prescriptions in both our state and the nation has decreased since the epidemic was identified. Another cause of the deaths is counterfeit pills that have become available from the black market. The risks of these pills are:
they come from an unknown source,
they may contain an unsafe active ingredient, and
they may contain harmful/toxic ingredients such as fentanyl which Mr. Meynardie calls a "Game Changer."
Fentanyl is many times more potent than heroin or prescribed opioids. He cited that 1 milligram of fentanyl is lethal.
Another contributing factor to the abuse of illicit opioid pills is the wide availability of pill presses and binding agents in the U.S. The DOJ is currently investigating pill press manufacturers. Many of the black market pills sold as opioids contain no oxycodone but do contain significant amounts of heroin and fentanyl. In 2015, the overdose deaths were primarily due to heroin and fentanyl. The following slide provided by Mr. Meynardie shows the changes in the causes of US Overdose death causes in the 2000-2015 period. It is interesting to note the increase in the fentanyl and fentanyl analog deaths from essentially zero to over 20,000 deaths annually or about 2 per hour.
We thank Mr. Meynardie for his very informative presentation and for his service to our country. He (right) is shown in the following photo with Club Past President Mike Dawkins (center) who introduced him and with Daren LaMarca (left) of the Jackson U.S. Attorney's office.
Huiming “Rita” Sun was inducted into the Rotary Club of North Jackson at the club's July 16, 2019, meeting by Club President Greg Campbell. She was proposed for membership by Uriel Pineda and sponsored by Past President Don Roberts.
Rita is the owner of Wealth Management LLC and her office is located in the Mississippi Farm Bureau Building on Ridgewood Road in Northeast Jackson. Born and educated in China, she came to Mississippi College in 2008 to study and obtain her Master of Business Administration degree. Rita is a Charted Financial Analyst (CFA®) and a member of The CFA® Society of Mississippi. She is married and lives in Clinton with her husband, Xiao Luo, and their two children, Joshua and Joanna.
North Jackson Rotarian and Architect Jack Allin and businessman and lawyer Wade Creekmore spoke to the Rotary Club of North Jackson about the Lake Okhissa Project of the Scenic Rivers Development Alliance in Franklin County, Mississippi at the Club’s July 16 meeting. The project features a lodge and 1,000 person conference center on the lake which was built on US Forest Service land. The spring-fed lake features crystal-clear water. The concept includes the possibility of a golf course in addition to water-based sports.
Mr. Creekmore discussed Meadville and Franklin County where he spent much of his career. He focused on the excellent school system and the town’s Chess Club, the Southwest Mississippi Chess Foundation, that has taught chess to a large number of Franklin County residents and successfully competed in tournaments nationwide winning many club and individual awards.
Mr. Allin discussed the Lake Okhissa project in detail. The following is an architect’s rendition of the lodge as seen from Lake Okhissa.
The next photo is a rendition of the expected view of the lake as seen from the over the lodge’s swimming pool.
We thank Messrs. Creekmore and Allin for their presentation and for their work on behalf of the citizens of Franklin County. They are shown following their presentation with Club President Greg Campbell (left).
This week’s Rotary Foundation Thought is about Health, Hunger and Humanity Grants (3H).
In Romania orphaned and ill children are consuming donated eggs, milk, meat, and poultry because of a grant from The Rotary Foundation that benefits local farmers. Farmers use the grant to buy everything from animal feed to packaging materials. There is one stipulation, the farmers have to donate a portion of their products to children’s hospital, schools, and orphanages. 3H grants fund large long-term international, grassroots projects. By contributing to The Rotary Foundation you are taking part in these grants. The Rotary Foundation is our Foundation; it is critical that we take
ownership of it and do what we can to change and save lives.
Rotary announces US$100 million to eradicate polio
EVANSTON, Ill. (June 10, 2019) — Rotary is giving US$100 million in grants to support the global effort to end polio, a vaccine-preventable disease that once paralyzed hundreds of thousands of children each year.
The funding comes as Rotary and its partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) address the final—and most pressing—challenges to ending poliovirus transmission, and as Nigeria approaches three years without any reported cases of wild poliovirus, bringing the Africa region closer to polio-free status.
“We have the wild poliovirus cornered in the smallest geographic area in history, and now there are just two countries that continue to report cases of the wild virus,” said Michael K. McGovern, chair of Rotary’s International PolioPlus Committee. “As we work with our partners to apply innovative new strategies to reach more children, and embrace lessons learned thus far, Rotary is doubling down on our commitment to end polio for good. I’m optimistic that the end of polio is within our grasp, but we must remain vigilant in rallying global political and financial support as we push towards a polio-free world.”
While there were only 33 cases of wild poliovirus reported in 2018, the last mile of eradication has proven to be the most difficult. Barriers to eradication--like weak health systems, insecurity, and mobile and remote populations--must be overcome. As long as a single child has polio, all children are at risk, which underscores the need for continued funding and commitment to eradication.
To support polio eradication efforts in endemic countries, Rotary is allocating half the funds it announced today to: Afghanistan ($16.3 million), Nigeria ($10.2 million), and Pakistan ($25.2million). Additional funding will support efforts to keep vulnerable countries polio-free:
Chad ($102,395)
Democratic Republic of the Congo ($9.5 million)
Ethiopia ($2.6 million)
Iraq ($6 million)
Kenya ($6.3 million)
Mali ($1.2 million)
Somalia ($1.4 million)
South Sudan ($1.2 million)
Syria ($1.7 million)
Yemen ($2.1 million)
The World Health Organization (WHO) will receive $1.3 million to conduct research, and will also receive support for surveillance activities in its Africa ($10.9 million) and Eastern Mediterranean ($4 million) Regions.
Rotary has committed to raising $50 million a year to be matched 2-to-1 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, amounting to $150 million for polio eradication annually. Rotary has contributed more than $1.9 billion to fight the disease, including matching funds from the Gates Foundation, and countless volunteer hours since launching its polio eradication program, PolioPlus, in 1985. In 1988, Rotary became a spearheading partner in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative with the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Gates Foundation later joined. Since the initiative launched, the incidence of polio has plummeted by more than 99.9 percent, from about 350,000 cases in 1988 to 33 cases of wild poliovirus in 2018.
About Rotary
Rotary brings together a global network of volunteer leaders dedicated to tackling the world’s most pressing humanitarian challenges. We connect 1.2 million members from more than 35,000 Rotary clubs in almost every country in the world. Their service improves lives both locally and internationally, from helping those in need in their own communities to working toward a polio-free world. Visit Rotary.org and endpolio.org for more about Rotary and its efforts to eradicate polio.
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